Gatekeeper is like an isometric Risk of Rain 2, so go ahead and try the free prologue

It's a great feeling when you find a new nightly game—something you want to sit down and play for an hour or two every evening after a long day. A couple weeks ago I found my newest obsession: Balatro, a roguelike deckbuilder that uses poker rules (and then utterly shatters those rules). Since I found it, not a night has gone by that I haven't played at least a few hands of Balatro, and when I'm not playing it I'm often watching videos of other people playing it. 

After putting the Destiny 2 Legacy Collection up for grabs for a week, the Epic Games Store appears to have drifted back into a daily rhythm of free games. Today's offering is Art of Rally, a stylized top-down racing game from the maker of Absolute Drift.

I love how Microsoft Flight Simulator exists in the background now, like the distant roar of an overhead flight path. Not only is it just nice to have a shiny, new version of one of the gaming OGs there to pick up and play at any time, every now and then it drops an absolutely gorgeous new trailer showing off some wild technical wizardry or hyper-detailed new cityscape. That's exactly what's happened now, with Flight Sim's latest update inviting you to pay a flying visit to an eclectic collection of European cities.

Let’s get the obvious talking point out of the way: Pokémon Scarlet & Violet are divisive games. Generation IX has caught a lot of heat for its glitches and lack of polish, but despite that, I personally have still had fun with these games. So someone like me should love The Indigo Disk, right?

The wizards at Don't Starve developer Klei Entertainment helped write a new playbook for colony sims with the release of Oxygen Not Included, and Ratopia has taken a few pages from it and gone off in an adorable direction of its own. It's a survival city builder that hit Early Access last month, and I'm mighty impressed with the demo so far, which is also giving off some unexpected Terraria energy. 

Alternatively, you can buy them outright on mobile for $20 each.

Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering owner Hasbro is laying off 1,100 employees.

Marvel has some major success stories in gaming in recent years with Insomniac’s Spider-Man games, but at the same time, the company has also endured some failures. Take, for instance, Eidos Montreal’s Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which enjoyed solid critical reception but failed to sell to expectations, or Crystal Dynamics’ Marvel’s Avengers, which suffered an even worse fate, taking a beating on both fronts before being delisted earlier this year.

Wild and weird action roguelike Picayune Dreams released from Early Access recently, meaning it's definitely time to enjoy this thing if you're a fan of horde survival roguelikes, bullet hells, or games that get all meta and screwy. Populated by a cast of surrealist 3D renders that look like rejected 1990s clipart and backed up with a very serious drum and bass breakcore soundtrack, this is an indie that's decidedly, committedly into a specific aesthetic.

By Andrew Webster, an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

God of War Ragnarok DLC is coming after all, and best of all, it's free. God of War Ragnarok: Valhalla is a new roguelike mode dropping on PS4 and PS5 for all players on Tuesday, December 12. 

Here’s a blast from the past: PSone game Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace looks set to hit PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 via the PlayStation Plus Classics catalog.